IGN Exclusive Interview: The Wire's David Simon

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We speak to the creator of the spectacular HBO series about what's to come.

By Eric Goldman

Watch The Wire! Sorry, it's just that it's difficult to write about this amazing show without attempting to get people to check it out, as it is easily one of the very best programs on television today. Currently in its fourth season, the HBO series, which began as an involving but seemingly straight-forward story of some cops attempting to take down a drug dealer, has proved instead to be a complex and fascinating look at the city of Baltimore. In the years since the show began, an ever-growing cast of characters have continued to take the audience further into many different aspects of the city, showing us the intertwined lives of the local police officers, drug dealers, addicts, politicians and school kids, and how their situations affect each other in ways both subtle and direct.

The Wire was created and is executive produced by David Simon, a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, who has teamed on the series with frequent collaborator Ed Burns, a former Baltimore homicide detective turned school teacher. On the heels of the recent announcement that The Wire will be returning for a fifth and final season, I had the opportunity to speak to Simon about his goals with the series and what we might expect as he approaches season 5, which Simon has previously noted will deal with the media and their involvement in the world the series exists in.

IGN TV: First off, congratulations on the fifth season order.

David Simon: Thanks. It's nice to be able to finish the show on our own terms, so we feel good.

IGN TV: You've said that you envisioned The Wire as a five season story. Was that the plan from the start?

Simon: From very close to the start I would say. After we finished the first season and establishing the world, Ed Burns and I sat around and thought about things we wanted to pull through the keyhole in parts of the city that we wanted to depict. And we came up with the schools; with the idea of the working class for season 2, and the "Death of Work" as a theme. We came up with the idea of adding City Hall and the notion of reform. And then I wanted to do something with the media in this world that we've established and depicted. We didn't seal it off at five [seasons] right there; those were the ideas that we had. Everything else that we came up with -- we talked about other things -- either felt not substantial enough to motivate an entire season or it was in some way redundant with one of those five other themes. And then, as other writers came on, we would actually throw it out to them and say, "Listen, we only have five themes. If you've got anything else in your head that you think can be done with this universe, speak now." We kicked a few things around, but nobody felt as if we had anything else that wouldn't feel redundant and like it was dragging the show too far. So yeah, I think Ed and I had those five things in our head somewhere before we started season 2.

The Wire creator David Simon (left) with actor Andre Royo (Bubbles)

IGN TV: How much of the overreaching story arcs did you have in mind initially? For instance, when did you decide how the Stringer Bell/Avon Barksdale story was going to end?

Simon: We actually decided that before the end of the first season. Originally, when the show was first conceived, we thought [the cops] would pick a different target each season and run a different case. And we kept to that idea, but having created the whole Barksdale universe, we felt that there was more to say about that world, and it dovetailed nicely into the political and reform season. So we planned to go back to it, but we felt that to go back to it right away in the second season, the show would have seemed smaller than our intention. We didn't actually say it to HBO right away, because they would have thought we were crazy and thrown us out of the office, but our intention was to try to depict an American city and all of its internal problems and to address why it is that we can't solve those problems, and to reflect on that. And so we were looking at slicing up different pieces of the city every year. We felt we absolutely needed to go to another place in that city and address another theme in season 2 and leave the Barksdale story to progress at a slower pace and then revisit it in season 3. That was all decided in season 1.

IGN TV: Ed Burns brings his experience as a former cop and a teacher to the show, and you spent many years as a crime reporter. On top of that, since you began the show, have you been doing additional research for the show?

Simon: Absolutely. We either do research on our own or we hire the people who can help the writing staff achieve worlds that we're not as familiar with. Bill Zorzi, who came on in season 3, was one of the more veteran political correspondents at the Baltimore Sun; he was Assistant City Editor, and covered state and local politics for most of his career there. Rafael Alvarez, who worked on season 2 in particular, came from a family who had a long maritime tradition, around the port. We tend to bring people on when we have worlds we're less familiar with, and then the other thing is that we spend the time in-between seasons researching that which we don't know. I covered some politics when I was at the paper and we had Zorzi, so we didn't need a great deal of research into the political Baltimore. We knew a lot of it. But the port, we threw ourselves at the International Longshoreman Association Local here in Baltimore and said, "Help us. Explain how your world works." And they were incredibly helpful. It was really a joy getting to know those people. I don't want to reveal what season 5 is, but we're doing research now into a couple of areas. We know the media stuff, working for a newspaper, but there's other elements to the season.